211–220 of 326 posts
Statement posted by staff, signed by many Googlers and also academics, industry experts etc: https://googlewalkout.medium.com/standing-with-dr-timnit-geb...
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When was the last time a marginalized group gained rights by asking politely?
Are we evaluating her as a researcher or as an activist? I’ve read some of her research (that’s on arxiv) and it’s... not on the level that “Google AI researcher” implies. It’s good that they hire from the Humanities, but we tend to smush all academics as if they all had equal rigor and value. Maybe she’s a great activist. Or a great cook. Being it that I’m not into activism, I can’t judge that. ---- Edit: I have to…
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What about paying $90 million to the key person in creation of android? Honestly, he is a scumbag, but that doesn’t nullify his contribution to google (?) it’s not that he was paid for sexual harassment, it’s that he got paid for being creator of one of the most important products in the world.
He sold Android to Google in 2005 for a hefty sum, and he drew a large salary and stock package every year since. Why in the world would he need a $90M exit package on top of all that when he's being fired for severe workplace misconduct? He already got paid for those contributions.
If they had fired him under more favorable circumstances his payout would have been significantly higher.
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> "You are not worth having any conversations about this, since you are not someone whose humanity... is acknowledged or valued in this company," she said in the email. "Stop writing your documents because it doesn't make a difference." This was the email she sent, as a manager at the company.
WOW what a misleading quote. Here's the full paragraph that that is from: > Imagine this: You’ve sent a paper for feedback to 30+ researchers, you’re awaiting feedback from PR & Policy who you gave a heads up before you even wrote the work saying “we’re thinking of doing this”, working on a revision plan figuring out how to address different feedback from people, haven’t heard from PR & Policy besides them asking you…
If a manager within the company wants to publicly express her frustration with leadership, then this is an alright message to send — leaving aside the very implicative final sentence.
It still seems reasonable to fire anyone who sends such a message to their colleagues rather than working through the office's politics more quietly, but it also seems reasonable for staff to protest and rally behind that person in support of them.
Ultimatums never work, and threatening to resign is never a good strategy (compared to either trying to amicably work things out OR just resigning). However Google's passive-aggressive response wasn't terribly great either ("We respect your decision to leave Google ... and we are accepting your resignation.") It's a firing packaged up as fake "respect". I wish both sides learned more about how to de-escalate situatio…
They could have written “we won’t meet your ultimatum but we don’t think you’ll resign like you threatened, so see you after vacation”. Would that be better?
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It is unfortunate that way too many commenters on a prior threads dismissed her as a some twitter personality and trivialized her body of work in spite of the fact that she is well regarded and reputable in the ML community. Both the positive aspects of her contributions and the clear negatives of her approach were rightly pointed out by various people (as well as problems with process and politics at Google); perhap…
I think the tone on HN was markedly more critical than elsewhere and I certainly notice that the divergence in tone seems greatest when discussing black people and women.
It is unfortunate that way too many commenters on a prior threads dismissed her as a some twitter personality and trivialized her body of work in spite of the fact that she is well regarded and reputable in the ML community. It's becoming clear a rising number of her colleagues are in support of what she was seeking to publish. A reviewer on reddit mentioned the authors have plenty of time to make revisions if there…
I see different claims from Google researchers, but it seems that at least for some internal review is used to access quality of the work [1,2]. It might potentially harm the freedom of the researcher, but once again, unless I missed something, there is no evidence that Google asked her to withdraw the paper and never resubmit.
As I already wrote in different comment, I can not think of a single reason to ask for reviewers identities unless she wanted to confront them personally.
[1] https://twitter.com/julianibarz/status/1334623651719643141 [2] https://twitter.com/vivnat/status/1334710506045669376
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Where is elsewhere? The big online communities I'm a part of are twitter, reddit, hacker news, and facebook. It's true that hacker news seems to be different from those when discussing culture war topics. With hacker news being father to the right than twitter and reddit, and more center right than my facebook feed. One conclusion is hacker news exists in a right wing bubble. The other is that twitter and reddit exis…
> I would guess your "elsewhere" exists in a ideological bubble that is much stronger than the one hacker news exists in. I am in a bubble where I mostly talk to college educated people and people who have educated themselves in a similar tradition or are well-read. Perhaps it is snobbish of me, but I am mostly okay with that bubble for discussion forums. Conditioning on that type of person, who make up most people o…
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WOW what a misleading quote. Here's the full paragraph that that is from: > Imagine this: You’ve sent a paper for feedback to 30+ researchers, you’re awaiting feedback from PR & Policy who you gave a heads up before you even wrote the work saying “we’re thinking of doing this”, working on a revision plan figuring out how to address different feedback from people, haven’t heard from PR & Policy besides them asking you…
Thank you for the full quote, it does give it much more perspective! (It wasn't in the linked article). If a manager within the company wants to publicly express her frustration with leadership, then this is an alright message to send — leaving aside the very implicative final sentence. It still seems reasonable to fire anyone who sends such a message to their colleagues rather than working through the office's polit…
Can you unpack this a bit? Several employers, past and present have encouraged employees to communicate and attempt to resolve conflicts (presumably, maybe ostensibly, giving them opportunities to work it out as adults and professionals) amongst employees first as the first actionable steps. In fact, current employer has this as a point of policy for interpersonal conflicts barring severe enough circumstances where a reasonable person would say "yes this requires intervention from on high".
That said, why should it be any different in a situation such as this? I feel there may be context to your suggestion that isn't fully stated here-as to why it's reasonable to fire someone over this. Maybe there are implied parameters of just how egregious a situation has to be in your opinion that I didn't intimately tune into?
To me the final sentence reads as a continuation of the hypothetical the author is asking the reader to consider, as a metaphor for the treatment she experienced, not a direct j'accuse to the reader/recipient.
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WOW what a misleading quote. Here's the full paragraph that that is from: > Imagine this: You’ve sent a paper for feedback to 30+ researchers, you’re awaiting feedback from PR & Policy who you gave a heads up before you even wrote the work saying “we’re thinking of doing this”, working on a revision plan figuring out how to address different feedback from people, haven’t heard from PR & Policy besides them asking you…
Thank you for the full quote, it does give it much more perspective! (It wasn't in the linked article). If a manager within the company wants to publicly express her frustration with leadership, then this is an alright message to send — leaving aside the very implicative final sentence. It still seems reasonable to fire anyone who sends such a message to their colleagues rather than working through the office's polit…
Managers act as agents of the company and the amount of legal assfucking that statement opens the company up to is enormous.